Me and my friend Jimmy were looking through a couple of crates of records at a spot in a forgotten corner of San Jose, the old geezer who ran the place sold doo wop and surf rock but had come into a few boxes of old 80's dance 12" singles that his was offloading indiscriminately, siloed like garbage in a corner, safely away from his Elvis memorabilia. We took a box each and flipped through, handing scores back and forth and Jimmy in his benevolence passed me this beaten e.p by The Pool, telling me it was good and that I could have it as he already had a copy, I didn't thank him, for that would be admitting ignorance, and put it in my pile to be forgotten.

I was looking through my shelves today for a totally different record that I was planning on recording to post up, couldn't find it as per usual, but in the process came across this record and finally decided to give it a listen. It was good.

The Pool was Patrick Keel, a drummer in several Austin new wave and punk bands who went solo with this dark wave electro outing in 1982. This e.p follows an album, both on Moment Productions, a label that released records by I think one of the most overlooked punk bands that I know of (not that I know that many), Austin's own The Big Boys.

Patrick is still in the industry, teaching Music Business at a media college in Irving, TX.

The A side, Dance It Down, was supposed to be two tracks, a vocal and a dub, but after I recorded it I couldn't tell where one began and the other ended, they just blend together, so I'm putting the entire side up as a single track. You'll figure it out, if it even matters, which I doubt it does as it still sounds good.

Here is a rare female-produced funk song from Jackki Milligan. "Got Me Burnin' Up" has an all star lineup of musicians including Latin percussionist Willie Bobo, jazz-funk guitarist David T. Walker, and Darryl Roberts from Mighty Fire on synthesizer. Synth work on this record is especially great with nice bass line and the perfect hook. Jakki also released an earlier 7" version that is more rare. I prefer the harder synth funk approach of the 12", though the 7" is still great and would appeal to modern soul fans. Apparently Jakki realized she had a hit on her hands and assembled a great crew to re-record an updated more club friendly version. I'm glad she did. This record also has the distinction of having the most exhaustive musician credits on the label of any I've encountered with the majority of its real estate devoted to text.

Known for his duets with Alyson Williams and a handful of modern soul releases on Def Jam in the mid eighties, Chuck Stanley is still apparently working but I can't dig much up on what he has been getting into recently. 'I Want You Here' is his 12" debut from 1984 on Starlite records, it was produced by Olufemi Fasehun, who has a few synth heavy New York scene singles to his credit, one of which inparticular always seems to allude me on ebay and never shows up in the crates.

Though he is from New York City, DJ and producer Tony Carrasco is considered a pioneer of the Italo Disco sound. This is a recurring theme in the history of recorded music, Americans being unable to recognize and appreciate the quality of their own most talented musicians. Many of Tony's productions never saw a proper U.S. release. His most famous contribution to dance music was being one half of Klein & M.B.O. and co-writing and producing the classics "Dirty Talk" and "Wonderful".
Here is one of Tony's harder to find productions, an Italian-only 12" from 1983 under the group name Gongs Gang. This tune is an excellent piece of Italo-boogie and fortunately the vocals aren't too wonky to screw up the great production.